Monster Hunt

Story

Dylan and his girlfriend Rebecca are poor and somewhat in debt. One day, Rebecca called Dylan to tell him about a rare monster that, if they can successfully hunt it down, they will gain riches. Dylan agrees and gathers up his other friend; Rebecca's twin sister (who you would never thought would be Rebecca's twin).

Characters

To be honest, I only really remember Katherine the most as she has the more hilarious and memorable dialogue. She also has a more developed backstory than the others. (Dylan has one too technically but it seemed minor). Besides the four main characters in the game, you get to have secret bonus characters recruited to your party! I only found three so far (don't know if there's more) but their skills can be a huge asset to your party! Sadly, they only have a few lines when you first meet and recruit them, then they remain mute for the rest of the journey.

Equipment and socketing

Throughout the game, you'll be able to obtain scrolls that are used to socket your equipment to boost their stats. They are actually relativity easy to get as they can be dropped normally from common enemies and obtained from chests. Of course, just because they're easy to get, doesn't mean you'll get the specific scroll you want, which is why sometimes you should save specific scrolls for better gear as they can be replaced fairly often so you don't have to grind for the scrolls you want.

Normally when you see that you've gotten the same gear already, you might sell it without a second thought. In this game, equipments (and items as well) even with the same name, may have different stats, sockets, and effects. For instance, say I have two rifles, both named Crimson Rose. One gives me higher attack and agility stat but with only 1 socket. While the other gives less stats but with 4 sockets. Depending on your values and patience, one might be worth more than the other, so it's important to check to see if another equipment of the same name has the better stats you want and the number of sockets.

Skills

Every character can learn 8 skills maximum in the game. I rarely used skills that are magical attacks because they barely do any damage. My regular attacks does more damage! I don't know if it's because of my magical stat isn't high enough, the monster's magical defense and elemental affinity is too high or a combination of all of them. Skills that uses TP are pretty powerful, that is if you even get to use them as by the time you saved enough TP, most of the time the monsters are already close to death (via regular attacks). You'll only really see TP skills shine in boss battles; even then, they might not be effective as some bosses are immune to them.

Maps

The mapping is pretty good with lots of details in them. The complaints I do have of it would be that in areas with monsters in them, the map only have narrow passages that forces you to fight monsters. If you run away, the monster will still be there, so if you want to progress, then you'll have to fight. In maps where there isn't narrow passages are flooded with monsters where it's very easy to be surrounded by.

An example of what's to come

Battles

Battles seem to fluctuate to being fair to unfair and dirt cheap at times. In one battle, you might beat it normally; then move on to what you were doing. Other times you'll face off against monsters with really powerful/status ailment skills that can affect everyone. Then once you kill them, you find out that other monsters can constantly resurrect without limit; there will be multiple of them that can do it, so they'll just heal and resurrect each other if you're not doing enough damage. I do have to say that the monsters are smart, they only heal those that are damaged instead of randomly healing a monster who's perfectly fine. After battles more often than not, you'll find that your rewards for winning is a paltry amount of gold. Thankfully monsters will occasionally drop equipment that can be sold for a sufficient amount of gold.

Final Boss

I normally don't talk about final bosses in reviews unless they're really good combat and or story wise, or being ridiculously cheap and overpowered. In this case, it's the latter. The final boss has two forms, the first form is fair, the second one is frustrating to fight against. In his final form, the final boss is extremely fast and is able to attack twice in one turn most of the time. He has multiple skills that can hit everyone for 1/3 of their health; it's very possible for him to spam those skills and see your party cling to their last bit of health (because healing spells that heals the whole party only heals a somewhat small amount; there are no healing items that will restore everyone's health, if there were, then I didn't see them somehow). When he's not spamming skills that hit everyone for a good amount of damage, he's killing a single character (even at full health and is properly geared) with a ludicrously strong skill. Also if that wasn't bad enough, he has a instant kill skill that is horrifyingly accurate!!! Granted, the final boss is possible to beat (after many game overs where I died before I barely get to do anything). After beating the game, the player is informed of several goodies to expect in the continuation of this game in the future; that they may wander around the game some more and fight an upgraded final boss. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to bother fighting an upgraded final boss if the original one was that cheap to fight against.

Other bugs and issues:

-On the title screen, for some odd reason, I can't start the game for a few seconds.
-When fighting a very large enemy with a health gauge that stretches from left to right of the entire screen, being able to select an enemy to attack gets very slow.
-The weapon Soul Edge, while it's description says the user will lose health every turn in battle, an equipped character with Soul Edge will still take damage over time when not in battle as if they were poisoned.
-Fruit does not cure a charmed character like it said it would
-I don't know if it's intentional or not, but in the second area; onward, resting areas only restore health; not sp.
-Equipment that said it would reduce holy/dark element doesn't feel like it does its job as I still get hit pretty hard by those two elements as if I wasn't wearing them.

The portal that I circled red in memory maze. DO NOT GO INTO THAT PORTAL!!! If you do, then you'll be warped to the ruins with spikes, the first time you go through that ruins, the spikes are passable. In memory maze when you go through it again, it's impossible to pass those spikes (they can still hurt you when they pop up). And there is no way back, so you're pretty much stuck there until you load your last save file (unless you only saved in one file; you saved over it when you got to the ruins in memory maze, then you'll have to start the game all over again from the beginning).

I had fun playing this game to a certain extent. I like Katherine's personality and reactions, I enjoyed the details in maps (if they're not swarmed by monsters); battles are good (when they don't consist of extremely annoying enemies that can charm the whole party, which is very often; the item that's supposed to cure charm doesn't work). The bugs, issues, and the cheapness of the final boss dragged this game down, but it can be a nice 5 hour game if they don't bother you.